Ok, we had a lot of predictions before the election. Here's mine after: the Democrats take the Presidency in two years. Probably Obama, but Hillary's the dark horse. What do the Republicans have left to run on that anybody believes?
So Hillary will donate all her massive funds, groundwork, and campaign experts to Boraxo Obama? Not without a fight, methinks. --- "Boraxo Obama Fourty Acres and a Twenty Mule Team" --- Barrack was raised a Muslim in Indonesia for what it's worth:
Probably thought conversion to Christianity was the politically expedient thing to do back in the day. Now that we've got our first Muslim Congressperson and first Socialist Senator, he might have well have just stayed himself and saved the effort.
2008 is going to be quite a year. McCain and Clinton are the frontrunners. Obama, Romney and Guiliani look viable. I'd think today that two and even possibly four of those five will be on tickets next year, but I'd not put any money on it this early.
For the record:
I was not raised in a religious household....
This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part—no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well. Moreover, as a child I rarely came in contact with those who might offer a substantially different view of faith. My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.
Enough with the predictions, already. Two years is a looong time from now.
Barack Obama? Who knows anything about the man. At the moment he sounds like the religious version of Kerry. Kerry was the military hero, Obama is the religious guy. Democrats are still thinking wrapping paper at this point. Maybe in two years they will be looking at the sort of blue dog conservative who got elected this last cycle. Or maybe they will be dealing with massive unpopularity due to two years of show trials.
Why would the Dems nominate Obama? They own the plantation already and Steele's loss proves that the blacks don't have the brains or will to leave. The Dems segregated the blacks years ago and emasculated them with regards to political power, there isn't a single state that would swing Dem based upon race and Obama has nothing going for him aside from his color. A nice little "up from everything" story about overcoming abundance on his way to more but Miz Clinton isn't going to help him work through his little ethical problems.
For now, the Dems seem to have dropped talk about investigations into the energy task force and the use of intelligence pre-war - probably because they know there is nothing there and that was always just a sop to the Bushitler crowd. Or maybe they want to hold it until closer to 2008.
Instead, they're talking about raising the minimum wage, "implementing recommendations of the 9/11 commission", repealing the parts of the prescription drug plan that limit the government's bargaining power with Pharmaceutical companies and, of course, withdrawing from Iraq.
None of that will be unpopular, except that there is no pace of withdrawal that will satisfy all their constituents - forcing a quick withdrawal by withholding funds will cause things to get very bad, very quickly, but anything less will upset the rabid base.
If they're really willing to work with the President (or if they have any sense), we'll see a symbolic but practically meaningless increase in the minimum wage coupled with expansion of the EITC.
There will be no fight over bargaining with Big Pharma.
I'm not sure what "implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission" means. Presumably they don't mean the recommendations about "keeping terrorists on the run using all elements of national power", "vigorous efforts to track terrorist financing", and "long-term commitment to a secure and stable Afghanistan...[so that it does not] become a sanctuary for international crime and terrorism" - which obviously applies to Iraq as well.
I'm surprised that protectionist trade policies haven't come up yet. Or maybe I've missed them.
I don't think it is true that no one believes in Republicans anymore than it was true that when Democrats were losing they were done for. This is a two party system and that means every now and then it shifts, it always has.
I don't think that either HC or Obama can win. They need a guy like Bayh.
But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part—no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become
-sounds like Gnostic drivel to me: man controlling the divine mystery with no sustained committments to any particular faith or tradition.
But it is particular traditions, not syncretism, that best illuminate the universal truths we all pursue. We need to be grounded in a particular scene to make good sense of things.
As for "the wellspring of human culture" - it was the first sign which must have been simultaneously an "object" of linguistic and religious/esthetic import. Religion is much less an "expression of human culture" (since it begins at the beginning and its whole purpose is to construct myths and rituals to remember and explain that beginning) as "culture" (in the sense of the arts) is an attempt to distinguish the esthetic from its once conjoined twin, religion. But culture arguably achieves its greatest feats in this endeavor when it respects the origins it shares with religion, at least when religion gives culture the freedom it needs - here the western tradition is unparalleled.
I was reading that Obama's father was associated with the Mau Mau and probably has Muslim ancestors in the East African slave trade. Is that just unproven blogger scuttlebut or is that perhaps behind the reason Obama is running away from his past?
9 comments:
So Hillary will donate all her massive funds, groundwork, and campaign experts to Boraxo Obama?
Not without a fight, methinks.
---
"Boraxo Obama
Fourty Acres and a Twenty Mule Team"
---
Barrack was raised a Muslim in Indonesia for what it's worth:
Probably thought conversion to Christianity was the politically expedient thing to do back in the day.
Now that we've got our first Muslim Congressperson and first Socialist Senator,
he might have well have just stayed himself and saved the effort.
2008 is going to be quite a year. McCain and Clinton are the frontrunners. Obama, Romney and Guiliani look viable. I'd think today that two and even possibly four of those five will be on tickets next year, but I'd not put any money on it this early.
For the record:
I was not raised in a religious household....
This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part—no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well. Moreover, as a child I rarely came in contact with those who might offer a substantially different view of faith. My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.
from The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
Enough with the predictions, already. Two years is a looong time from now.
Barack Obama? Who knows anything about the man. At the moment he sounds like the religious version of Kerry. Kerry was the military hero, Obama is the religious guy. Democrats are still thinking wrapping paper at this point. Maybe in two years they will be looking at the sort of blue dog conservative who got elected this last cycle. Or maybe they will be dealing with massive unpopularity due to two years of show trials.
Why would the Dems nominate Obama? They own the plantation already and Steele's loss proves that the blacks don't have the brains or will to leave. The Dems segregated the blacks years ago and emasculated them with regards to political power, there isn't a single state that would swing Dem based upon race and Obama has nothing going for him aside from his color. A nice little "up from everything" story about overcoming abundance on his way to more but Miz Clinton isn't going to help him work through his little ethical problems.
For now, the Dems seem to have dropped talk about investigations into the energy task force and the use of intelligence pre-war - probably because they know there is nothing there and that was always just a sop to the Bushitler crowd. Or maybe they want to hold it until closer to 2008.
Instead, they're talking about raising the minimum wage, "implementing recommendations of the 9/11 commission", repealing the parts of the prescription drug plan that limit the government's bargaining power with Pharmaceutical companies and, of course, withdrawing from Iraq.
None of that will be unpopular, except that there is no pace of withdrawal that will satisfy all their constituents - forcing a quick withdrawal by withholding funds will cause things to get very bad, very quickly, but anything less will upset the rabid base.
If they're really willing to work with the President (or if they have any sense), we'll see a symbolic but practically meaningless increase in the minimum wage coupled with expansion of the EITC.
There will be no fight over bargaining with Big Pharma.
I'm not sure what "implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission" means. Presumably they don't mean the recommendations about "keeping terrorists on the run using all elements of national power", "vigorous efforts to track terrorist financing", and "long-term commitment to a secure and stable Afghanistan...[so that it does not] become a sanctuary for international crime and terrorism" - which obviously applies to Iraq as well.
I'm surprised that protectionist trade policies haven't come up yet. Or maybe I've missed them.
I don't think it is true that no one believes in Republicans anymore than it was true that when Democrats were losing they were done for. This is a two party system and that means every now and then it shifts, it always has.
I don't think that either HC or Obama can win. They need a guy like Bayh.
Miz Clinton is wearing a Bayh mask, Terrye. Isn't that enough?
Rick,
She is too short.
But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part—no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become
-sounds like Gnostic drivel to me: man controlling the divine mystery with no sustained committments to any particular faith or tradition.
But it is particular traditions, not syncretism, that best illuminate the universal truths we all pursue. We need to be grounded in a particular scene to make good sense of things.
As for "the wellspring of human culture" - it was the first sign which must have been simultaneously an "object" of linguistic and religious/esthetic import. Religion is much less an "expression of human culture" (since it begins at the beginning and its whole purpose is to construct myths and rituals to remember and explain that beginning) as "culture" (in the sense of the arts) is an attempt to distinguish the esthetic from its once conjoined twin, religion. But culture arguably achieves its greatest feats in this endeavor when it respects the origins it shares with religion, at least when religion gives culture the freedom it needs - here the western tradition is unparalleled.
I was reading that Obama's father was associated with the Mau Mau and probably has Muslim ancestors in the East African slave trade. Is that just unproven blogger scuttlebut or is that perhaps behind the reason Obama is running away from his past?
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